As relentless fires burn in Los Angeles, thousands of residents who fled their homes are just learning how poorly public officials prepared for such an event. Emergency response leaders following bad public policy have been too focused on sending firefighting equipment to Ukraine, keeping the homeless safe, protecting fish, and adopting green policies to focus on things like making sure there is enough water to feed fire hydrants and guaranteeing that the strongest, best-trained, most-skilled firefighters are leading operations.
Officials seem to believe that when fire forces you to flee your home, there is just one thing on your mind: the skin color and cultural experience of the firefighters who will bring you to safety. Will they be diverse enough to rescue you? Never mind if they are the best for the job, are they anything but straight white men?
That has been a major priority of the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), which, in 2022, launched its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Bureau (DEI), purportedly “focused on ensuring a safe, diverse and inclusive workplace for all.”
In January 2022, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti checked multiple DEI boxes by appointing Kristin Crowley as fire chief, the first female, LGBT chief in Los Angeles. That year, according to LAFD data, “of the more than 6,500 applicants to LAFD, 70% were people of color and nearly 8% … were female,” which was “double the … percentage of female firefighters within the Department” at the time.
The LAFD Girls Camp is one avenue for recruitment for female firefighters, hosting girls between 14 and 18 to explore career opportunities in the department.
The people who lost homes will be glad to know that DEI takes up four full pages of the LAFD City 2023-2026 strategic plan. LAFD has been busy training for fire response by reviewing the LAFD library “from a DEI perspective, to ensure policies, procedures, and language is consistent with the Department’s values.”
The LAFD Strategic Plan also describes intended spending to bolster its mission, including the following “sustainability” measures: “reduce electricity usage at all facilities” by implementing eco-friendly upgrades to lighting, power, and HVAC control systems; “install … solar energy parking shade structures”; “implement technology to monitor the Department’s net carbon emissions”; “purchase electric vehicles (EV) … to create a zero-emissions fleet”; “establish an EV emergency backup power system”; and “increase purchasing of certified energy-efficient products.”
It is hard to imagine much money is left for fire suppression when you consider all the green spending, combined with a massive budget cut. The New York Post reports Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass slashed the LAFD budget by $17.6 million in the 2024-25 fiscal year.
At least the LAFD has enough equipment. Apparently. In 2022 it sent five truckloads of “surplus” firefighting gear to Ukraine. When homeowners pay their property taxes, they probably think the fire department’s portion will be used for training and fire and crash response. But it must make the LAFD leaders feel nice to use that money for gifts to Ukraine.
The mayor’s office has the LAFD collecting data on homeless encampments, tracking their needs. In a way, it makes sense that LAFD examines encampments where cooking fires that normal cities would ban sometimes get out of control. ABC Channel 7 Television previously reported that “in 2018, there was an average of seven fires a day at encampments in Los Angeles. In 2021, that number jumped to 25” fires a day. But taxpayers may wonder if the homeless should such a significant focal point for LAFD.
The word “homeless,” appears 11 times in the strategic plan; together, the words “diverse” and “diversity” appear 16 times; the word “water” appears just twice, and the word “hydrant,” does not appear at all. It is clear fire suppression is not the priority.
With four wildfires raging and thousands of people evacuated from their homes, Los Angeles County and City struck a sometimes-defensive tone at a Wednesday morning press conference that was part informational and part damage control as they addressed why fire hydrants came up dry when they were needed to put out fires.
Janisse Quiñones, CEO and chief engineer of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), told the press how the water failure happened and implored consumers within the LADWP service area to conserve water.
“We had a tremendous demand on our system in the Palisades. We pushed the system the extreme: Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure,” Quiñones said. “What happened in Palisades — we have three large water tanks, about a million gallons each. We ran out of water in the first tank at about 4:45 p.m. yesterday. We ran out of water in the second tank about 8:30 p.m. and the third tank about 3 a.m. this morning. Those tanks help with the pressure on the fire hydrants and the hills at Palisades, and because we were pushing so much water in our trunk line — and so much water was being used before it can get to the tanks — we were not able to fill the tanks fast enough.”
“I need our customers to really conserve water, not just in the Palisade area, but the whole system, because the fire department needs the water to fight the fires, and we’re fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is really challenging,” Quiñones said. She also urged consumers to boil drinking water because there is “a lot of ash in the system.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appointed Quiñones to head LADWP in April, “to lead the department through the transition toward 100% clean energy by 2035,” and “moderniz[e] its infrastructure to be more resilient, getting to a reliant and resilient water future and ensuring vulnerable communities have access to affordable utilities.”
There is no excuse for fire hydrants going dry in the West Coast state. If other states can prevent massive fires and keep water flowing when needed, California should have the technology to do the same.
Firefighters across the nation know they can pick up water from any lake or reservoir in a pinch. Many rural areas without fire hydrants fight fires exclusively this way. But thanks to politics and policies, California water never seems to be where it is needed.
In 2014, voters approved a $7.5 billion water bond to build two new reservoirs, but they have not been built yet.
As of last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom has removed four dams on Klamath River to save certain fish, making for less surface water.
The LAFD surely has many incredibly brave firefighters (from a variety of “diverse” backgrounds) who are likely frustrated with policies that put them in danger.
But Los Angeles has lost sight of the basic reason fire departments exist, and there are people dead and full neighborhoods destroyed because of it.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
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